Federal committee approves first cancer cell immunotherapy trial to be tested on humans

CRISPR, a gene-editing therapy, was approved Tuesday by a national advisory committee for a study that will examine three types of cancer.

The trial, funded by the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, founded by billionaire Sean Parker, was proposed by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. They are planning to use the CRISPR-Cas9 technology to modify patients’ T cells in an effort to attack melanoma, multiple myeloma and sarcoma.

The federal Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee unanimously approved the proposal. However, the trial must still be approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

The Penn researchers have created CAR T-cell treatment, an immune therapy that consists of extracting T cells from a patient, genetically modifying them and then re-injecting them into the patient’s blood stream, according to the institute’s website. If the study is approved, the technology would be used to remove two genes in T cells to make the treatment more effective in preventing cancer from returning.

Back in April, Parker, co-founder of Napster and the first president of Facebook, established the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy with a $250 million donation.

More than 300 scientists at Stanford University, the University of California at San Francisco, Penn, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the University of California at Los Angeles have agreed to work on the study.

An early safety trial to test the safety of the therapy will be conducted at the University of Pennsylvania, the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and at the University of California, San Francisco. More than a dozen patients will participate.